Climate change threatens Winter Olympics

January 23, 2014

This is a chart showing former Winter Olympic locations that are climatically suitable for future games. Credit: Daniel Scott, University of Waterloo

Only six of the previous Winter Olympics host cities will be cold enough to reliably host the Games by the end of this century if global warming projections prove accurate.

Even with conservative climate projections, only 11 of the previous 19 sites could host the Games in the coming decades, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and Management Center Innsbruck (Austria).

"The cultural legacy of the world's celebration of winter sport is increasingly at risk," said Professor Daniel Scott, a Canada Research Chair in Global Tourism and lead author of the study. "Fewer and fewer traditional winter sports regions will be able to host a Olympic Winter Games in a warmer world."

The study finds that internationally renowned Olympic sites, such as Squaw Valley (USA), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany), Vancouver (Canada) and Sochi (Russia) would no longer have climates suitable to reliably host the Games by the middle of the 21st century. With additional warming projected for later decades of this century, as few as six former host locations would remain climatically suitable.

"This report clearly points out the challenges that lie ahead for the Olympics because of climate change," said Chris Steinkamp, executive director of Protect Our Winters and who was not involved with the study. "It's particularly powerful to see how past Olympic host cities could be impacted under a higher emission scenario, so hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to the IOC and world leaders that major commitments to carbon reductions need to be made."

The need for weather risk management strategies by Olympic organizers has intensified as the average February daytime temperature of Winter Games locations has steadily increased – from 0.4°C at Games held in the 1920-50s, to 3.1°C in Games during the 1960-90s, and 7.8°C in Games held in the 21st century.

"Today it would be difficult to imagine successfully delivering the diverse Games program exclusively on natural ice and snow, as it was in the early decades of the Olympic Winter Games," said Dr. Robert Steiger of the Management Center Innsbruck.

Weather risk management will become even more important in the coming decades with average February temperatures in past Winter Olympic host locations expected to warm an additional 1.9 to 2.1°C by mid-century and 2.7 to 4.4°C in late century.

The study found that the success of the Games is often partially attributed to favourable weather, while poor weather is highlighted as one of the greatest challenges faced by Olympic Organizing Committees. Weather affects the ability to prepare for the Games and can directly impact outdoor opening and closing ceremonies, fairness of outdoor competitions, spectator comfort, transportation, and visibility and timing of television broadcasts.

The study also examines how technological advancements and strategies developed over several decades have been used to manage weather risk at the Winter Olympics. Technology like snowmaking, track/jump refrigeration and high-resolution weather forecasting are now critical components of staging a successful Winter Games.

"Despite technological advances, there are limits to what current weather risk management strategies can cope with," said Professor Scott. "By the middle of this century, these limits will be surpassed in some former Winter Olympic host regions."

The study provides an important opportunity for reflection on the long-term implications of global climate change for the world of sport and the world's collective cultural heritage symbolized by the Olympic Movement. It also reveals that for some cities and regions interested in hosting a future Winter Olympics, the time to bid for the games might be sooner than later.

Related Stories

Sochi on the Black Sea coast in Russia will host the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games in 2014 which country will win what number of medals is open to debate. A study published in the International ...

The head of Russia's Olympic committee said Wednesday that his country was set to host the greenest Games ever when the winter version of the sports extravaganza opens in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in a year's time.

Recommended for you

Pressure, temperature and fluid composition play an important role in the amount of metals and other chemicals found in wastewaters from hydraulically fractured gas reservoirs, according to Penn State researchers.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and Google Switzerland has combined historical data with modern mapping engines to produce high-resolution maps of the world's surface ...

Pioneering work being carried out in a cave in New Mexico by researchers at McMaster University and The University of Akron, Ohio, is changing the understanding of how antibiotic resistance may have emerged and how doctors ...

The ice sheet covering Greenland is four times bigger than California—and holds enough water to raise global sea-level more than twenty feet if most of it were to melt. Today, sea levels are rising and the melting of Greenland ...

Scientists have called superoxide out as the main culprit behind coral bleaching: The idea is that as this toxin build up inside coral cells, the corals fight back by ejecting the tiny energy- and color-producing algae living ...

2 comments

It's time for the Olympics to be set in either a fixed location or one of several established locations on a rotating basis. It's getting to be too big for one city to host, and the selection process is too open to shenanigans.